Infants and other incontinent individuals wear disposable garments such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Disposable pull-on garments having fixed sides, which are also called “pant type” garments, have become popular for use on children able to walk and often who are toilet training. These pull-on garments have side panels with edges that are seamed together to form two leg openings and a waist opening. In order to contain body exudates as well as fit a wide variety of body shapes and sizes, these pull-on garments need to fit snugly about the waist and legs of the wearer without drooping, sagging or sliding down from its position on the torso. Examples of these pull-on garments are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,171,239 issued to Igaue et al. on Dec. 15, 1992; U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,681 issued to Strohbeen et al. on Sep. 9, 1986; U.S. Pat. No. 4,940,464 issued to Van Gompel et al. on Jul. 10, 1990; U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,433 to issued Hasse et al. on Sep. 21, 1993; U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,234 issued to Buell et al. on Oct. 29, 1996; and WO 96/31176 (Ashton) published on Oct. 10, 1996.
To prevent pull-on garments from drooping, sagging or sliding down from the torso of wearer, it is believed that a proper force should be generated at the waist and side panel areas of pull-on garments and applied to the torso of the wearer. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,415,649 issued to Watanabe et al. on May 16, 1995, discloses the use of elastic members which have different expanding stresses to provide a better fit to body. Another example is EP 0547497B1 (Van Gompel et al.) published on Mar. 26, 1997. This publication discloses a disposable training pant which has stretch gradient side panels to provide an improved fitness. Those conventional pull-on garments try to provide an improved fitness to the body of wearer by controlling forces applied to the waist and leg areas of wearer. However, the improvement in fitness may cause a red marking problem at those areas.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication H8-38546 published on Feb. 13, 1996 discloses a pant type disposable diaper which has a slit formed by not connecting leg portion elastics at the leg opening, to prevent marking of the skin by the leg portion elastics. However, this pull-on garment has a unextensible backsheet in the side panels, which tends to prevent the pull-on garment from providing an improved fitness.
Thus, none of the existing art provides all of the advantages and benefits of the present invention.